5. Unlocking Craft at Dunzo by Hiring Specialists
- Sai Ganesh Ex-Head of Brand, Dunzo
In terms of hiring, I have a slightly unpopular opinion. It’s important to hire specialists who are experts at one thing or one channel. You can mix them up with people who have a broad knowledge of marketing but having a deep understanding of one particular subject is magical.
That’s how we built our team with very, very specialized roles with regard to illustration, graphic design, filmmaking Instagram or copywriting, Twitter.
We pick a channel, pick up a particular content hub, and then you take one person who’s an expert in that field. That’s how we’ve seen benefits.
Another hack to hiring, especially for social media is, hiring digital native creators. By that I mean, if you want to build grow your Instagram channel for the next one or two years, you need to hire an Instagrammer.
You can’t hire somebody from, say, YouTube, and expect them to do Instagram.
Hiring people who have grown their own content or followership from nothing works out very well. Because then, these people a) are personally invested in learning about that platform, and b) they’re also cross applying their learnings.
It’s difficult to determine who should be the first few hires for Brand Marketing in a company because it’s like asking to choose between the left brain and the right brain.
One great copy person is very important. The copy person or the copywriter is the soul of the team. All your ideas, even for design, films, or ads, start with a good copywriter. Then, having a designer is next.
You can build your team in stages. That’s what we did at Dunzo.
We started with a design and a copy team. Then, we started adding other functions like illustrators, motion graphics. Filmmakers we only hired like two years ago. So, it’s about what you prioritize and obviously what your scale and requirements are.
Obviously, as the team becomes bigger, you have to get a couple of project managers because they become your real strength and advantage. They are the captain of the ship, run the creative team, understand the business objectives, stakeholder management and all those project manager like things.
Hiring is one of the most important things a marketing leader does. After that, it's only keeping your employees happy and aligned with your business objectives. You get the highest ROI on hiring people who love their job.
Rather than hiring mediocre people who can do three or four things somewhat well, find specialists who can do that one job really well and love doing it.